Legal row over iTunes domain name

Benjamin Cohen, 22, registered itunes.co.uk in 2000, but earlier this month the UK domain name registry, Nominet, handed the name over to Apple.

Mr Cohen, of Hackney, east London, has applied to the High Court for a judicial review, saying Nominet is biased against small businesses.

But Nominet say legal experts found Mr Cohen was abusing his registration.

The body's judgement, dated the 10 March, states by offering to sell the domain name and by continuing to re-direct people from itunes.co.uk Mr Cohen is abusing his registration.

"The domain name, in the hands of the respondent [Mr Cohen], is an abusive registration on the grounds of its use in a manner taking unfair advantage of, and being unfairly detrimental to, the rights of the complainant [Apple]."

Mr Cohen claims not to have heard of Apple's iTunes music download service until after it was launched last year.

He says he was contacted by lawyers for the company threatening to issue a High Court writ unless he ceased using the itunes.co.uk domain name.

Mr Cohen expressed surprise at the decision and said he would be challenging the legitimacy of Nominet in making it.

"We feel that the procedure that Nominet utilises to settle disputes is unfair and biased towards big business at the expense of legitimate small British companies."

Mr Cohen used the name while running a music search engine called Cyberbritain.
The address now forwards visitors to his new online shopping venture, quickquid.com.